A New Freedom Part II

In part one of this series we examined the morals, or lack therefore of, of Colonial-era Americans. To recap: 'loose' sexuality, to say nothing of prostitution, homosexuality and interracial marriage, were not nearly as taboo as they would be in later eras while drinking was the definitive American past time. Staggering amounts of booze were consumed by seemingly every man and woman over the age of 15 on a daily basis. The Boston Tea Party itself was plotted in a tavern (/Masonic lodge). Surely the Revolutionary generation would be a bit perplexed by a modern American society in which the enactment of 40,000 new laws has become the new norm. What then brought us to this sorry state of affairs? Put simply, democracy.

"The men who created the United States were truly revolutionaries: they revolutionized the concept of freedom.

"The Founding Fathers were part of a transatlantic movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to replace external controls over subjects in absolutist regimes with the internal restraints of citizens in republics. This movement began what is now called the Modern Age. The modernist movement required not just the overthrow of monarchs but also the repression of what was called 'man's animal passions.' The problem with the discipline of the gallows, the lash, and the sword, according to these revolutionaries, was that it was far less effective than individual self-discipline in keeping social order. Even though peasants, slaves, and the colonial subjects we have seen in taverns and bawdy houses held no formal political power, they were, according to this view, actually too free because they had no reason to control themselves. So the Founding Fathers redefined freedom as self-control and built a political system around it called democracy.

"To solve the lack of order they saw all around them, the fathers seized on one of the great -and often missed -ironies in world history: the only thing that could make men forsake their own freedom and still believe they were free was self-rule. A government of the people, John Adams argued, would make the people disciplined, stern, hard working, and joyless -the qualities he most admired. It would 'produce Strength, Hardiness Activity, Courage, Fortitude, and Enterprise; the manly noble and Sublime Qualities in human Nature, in Abundance.' A monarchy, on the other hand, would let them have too much fun and, paradoxically, allow them too much liberty. It 'would produce so much Taste and Politeness, so much Elegance in Dress, Furniture, Equipage, so much Musick and Dancing, so much Fencing and Skaiting, so much Cards and Backgammon, so much Horse Racing and Cockkfighting, so many Balls and Assemblies, so many Plays and Concerts that the very imagination of them makes me feel vain, light, frivolous, and insignificant.' Adams understood that democracy forced the people to shed their pleasures and surrender their personal freedom, because they alone would shoulder the responsibility of managing society. 'under a well-regulated Commonwealth, the People must be wise virtuous and cannot be otherwise. Under a Monarchy they may be as vicious and foolish as they please, nay, they cannot but be vicious and foolish... [T]here is one Difficulty which I know not how to get over. Virtue and Simplicity of Manners are indispensably necessary in a Republic among all orders and Degrees of Men. But there is so much Rascallity, so much Venality and Corruption, so much Avarice and Ambition such a Rage for Profit and Commerce among all Ranks and Degrees of Men even in America, that I sometimes doubt wether there is public Virtue enough to Support a Republic.' The Founding Fathers understood what we now choose to ignore" democracy is the enemy of personal freedom...

"During what we call the American Revolution, a second American revolution too place: a counterrevolution against the pleasure culture of the cities. Personal freedom and sensual pleasure came under attack during the democratic revolution not because the revolutionaries were puritans but because democracy is puritanical.

"We normally think of democracy as a system of rights and freedoms: voting, speaking freely, equal treatment under the law, and so forth. But true democracy, the kind of democracy that the Founding Fathers wanted, is much more than that. John Locke, the man who, in the English world, helped invent the notion that he people should rule and who inspired all of the American democratic revolutionaries, made this brutally clear. 'It seems plain to me,' he wrote in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), 'that the principle of all virtue and excellency lies in a power of denying ourselves the satisfaction of our own desire, where reason does not authorize them.' Locke knew that managing society is a big job requiring enormous discipline. If the people were to do it, then the people would have to renounce their personal freedom. Most importantly, they would have to be taught to feel shame for their selfish desires. 'Esteem and disgrace are, of all others, the most powerful incentives to them ind, when once it is brought to relish them,' Locke wrote. 'If you can once get into children a love of credit, and an apprehension of shame and disgrace, you have put into 'em the true principle, which will constantly work and incline them to the right.' The kind of punishment used by monarchs and slave owners to keep the people orderly and productive -whipping, flogging, executions, and the like -only 'patches up for the present, and skins it over, but reaches not to the bottom of the sore; ingenuous shame, and the apprehensions of displeasure, are the only true restraint. These alone ought to hold the reins, and keep the child in order.' "
(A Renegade History of the United States, Thaddeus Russell, pgs. 20-22)

John Adams, a great proponent of joylessness

The Founding Fathers were quite obsessed with public morals. Many of the libertarian persuasion will assume that this was only amongst the Federalist movement whose base was largely centered around Puritan New England. However, the other dominate faction -the 'agarian republicans' centered around Virginia -were equally concerned with public morals. What's more, the morals that they sought to impose upon the American populace were not even at their root Christian morals, but pagan.

"Speaking broadly, even grossly, one may characterize American schools of republican thought as being in two categories: those which reduced their principles into systems of ideologies, and those which did not. Those which did -again speaking broadly, for there were shades and overlappings, and the substantive differences are clearly visible only at the extremes -may likewise be characterized in two categories. One, the more classical, may be described as puritan; the other, the more modern, may be described as agrarian.

"The two versions of ideological republicanism held a number of attitudes in common, the most crucial being preoccupation with the mortality of republics ('Half our learning, said Dawes, 'is their epitaph.') The vital -that is life-giving -principle of republics was public virtue. It is important to understand just what these two words signified. Like their Greek counterparts, polis and arete, they did not connote what is suggested by the idea of Christian virtue, with its emphasis upon meekness, passivity, and charity; quite the opposite, for the Christian concept of virtue was originally formulated as the central ethic in a counterculture that arose as a conscious protest against the classical cult of manliness. Nor did the public (or the polis) include everyone. Not coincidently, public, like virtue, derives from Latin roots signifying manhood: 'the public' included only independent adult males. Public virtue entailed firmness, courage, endurance, industry, frugal living, strength, and above all, unremitting devotion to the weal of the public's corporate self, the community of virtuous men. It was at once individualistic and communal: individualistic in that no member of the public could be dependent upon any other and still be reckoned a member of the public; communal in that every man gave himself totally to the good of the public as a whole. If public virtue declined, the republic declined, and if it declined to far, the republic died. Philosophical historians had worked out a regular life cycle, or more properly death cycle, of republics. Manhood gave way to effeminacy, republican liberty to licentiousness. Licentiousness, in turn, degenerated into anarchy, and anarchy inevitably led to tyranny.

"What distinguished puritanical republicanism from the agrarian variety was that the former sought a moral solution to the problem of the mortality of republics (make better people), whereas the latter believed in a socio-economic-political solution (make better arrangements). Almost nothing was outside the purview of a puritanical republican government, for every matter that might in any way contribute to strengthening or weakening the virtue of the public was a thing of concern to the public -a res publica -and was subject to regulation by the public. Republican liberty was totalitarian: one was free to do that, and only that, which was in the interest of the public, the liberty of the individual being subsumed in the freedom or independence of his political community."
(Novus Ordo Seclorum, Forrest McDonald, pgs. 70-71)

the Roman Senate of the Republic

Put bluntly, pagan civilizations such as those that flourished in ancient Greece and Rome simply did not have the concept of individuality that we in the modern world now possess. What's more, this notion of individuality derived largely from Christianity and the Middle Ages of Europe. I know that this is a bold statement considering that fundamentalist Christians are amongst the most prominent vanguard for the suppression of individuality in the modern world, yet such an individuality could not have existed in the pagan societies of the Classical Age. What's more, the 'republican totalitarianism' that McDonald writes of above is a thoroughly pagan notion.

"Greek and Roman society was built on the conception of the subordination of the individual to the community, of the citizen to the state; it set the safety of the commonwealth, as the supreme aim of conduct, above the safety of the individual whether in this world or in a world to come. Trained from infancy in this unselfish ideal, the citizens devoted their lives to the public service and were ready to lay them down for the common good; or if they shrank from the supreme sacrifice, it never occurred to them that they acted otherwise than basely in preferring their personal existence to the interests of their country. All this was changed by the spread of Oriental religions which inculcated the communion of the soul with God and its eternal salvation as the only objects with living for, objects in comparison with which the prosperity and even the existence of the state sank into insignificance. The inevitable result of this selfish and immoral doctrine was to withdraw the devotee more and more from the public service, to concentrate his thoughts on his own spiritual emotions, and to breed in him a contempt for the present life which he regarded merely as a probation for a better and eternal. The saint and the recluse, disdainful of earth and rapt in ecstatic contemplation of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is ready to die for the good of his country. The earthly city seemed poor and contemptible to en whose eyes beheld the City of God coming in the clouds of heaven. Thus the centre of gravity, so to say, was shifted from the present to a future life, and however much the other world may have gained, there can be little doubt that this one lost heavily by the change. A general disintegration of the body politic set in. The ties of the state and the family were loosened: the structure of society tended to resolve itself into its individual elements and thereby to relapse into barbarism; for civilization is only possible through the active co-operation of the citizens and their willingness to subordinate their private interests to he common good. Men refused to defend their country and even to continue their kind. In their anxiety to save their own souls and the souls of others, they were content to leave the material world, which they identified with the principle of evil, to perish around them. This obsession lasted for a thousand years. The revival of Roman law, of the Aristotelian philosophy, of ancient art and literature at the close of the Middle Ages, marked the return of Europe to native ideals of life and conduct, to saner, manlier views of the world. The long halt in the march of civilization was over. The tide of Oriental invasion had turned at last. It is ebbing still."
(The Golden Bough, James Frazer, pgs. 359-360)

'Free' citizens of the Roman Republic were both required to serve in the legions (which often campaigned yearly) and pay for their own armor and weapons to do so

The safety of the commonwealth over that of the individual? Reverence for the patriot and hero that sacrifices of all, including their very life, for the good of the country? Frazer may as well have been discussing neocon campaign slogans or a Marine recruiting video rather than classical civilization. Yet the ethos of the Classical and Modern eras are converging more and more every day as Frazer implies. And this was very much the intention of the Founding Fathers. We need only consider their views on ancient Sparta (which is once again en vogue thanks to the heavily propagandist 300).

"One thinks of the remark of the Athenian Alcibiades about Sparta, the ancient republic that American republicans professed to admire the most: 'No wonder the Spartans cheerfully encounter death; it is a welcome relief to them from such a life as they are obliged to lead.' "
(Novus Ordo Seclorum, Forrest McDonald, pg. 73)

Were the obligations of Spartan freedom more terrifying than death?

And this, dear reader, was the 'freedom' that the Founders sought to impose upon us Americans. Of course this kind of unabashed militarism has never sat well with normal Americans. Thus, another -ism was needed to guide the populace towards proper republican virtues. Workaholism was determined to be an apt substitute for ultimately the greatest sin a free citizen of a virtuous republic could commit was unproductively. It was from Puritan New England that this philosophy derived.

"Even more persistent than the material structure of New England's economy was its ethic of work, which the founders of the Bay Colony introduced at an early date. This work ethic was a complex thing. It rested upon an idea that every Christian had two callings -a general calling and a special calling. The first was a Christian's duty to live a godly life in the world. The second was mainly his vocation. The Puritans did not think that success in one's calling was an instrument of salvation, but they believed that it was a way of serving God in the World."
(Albion's Seed, David Hackett Fischer, pgs. 155-156)

The so called Puritan work ethic emerged during the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation and was conceptualized by such legendary theologians as Martin Luther and John Calvin. The Puritan work ethic was essentially a transformation of the Catholic notion of good works, transferring them into a obligation to work hard as a sign of grace. However, this concept has always existed uneasily within a Christian framework. Man was condemned to labor due to Original Sin but he was also granted a weekly release from his labors to observe the Sabbath. Wealth is generally frowned upon in the New Testament and to an extent in the Old. The purpose of one's labors was what was ultimately important rather than the success. This was in stark contrast to the emerging commercial society beginning to take root in New England.

"The wealth a commercial perspective delivers provided a dilemma for a puritan society to wrestle with since the intense neo-Christianity of Puritanism was yoked to an intense talent for commercial transaction. This contradiction was resolved by declaring wealth a reliable sign of God's favor as poverty was a sign of His condemnation. Both pagan and mercantile ethical codes operated behind a facade of Christianity during the Christian era, weakening the gospel religion, while at the same time profiting from it and paying lip service to it. Proponents of these different frames called themselves Christians but did not live like Christians, rejecting certain tenets... those which interfered with personal gain."
(The Underground History of American Education, John Taylor Gatto, pg. 291)

The rise of Christianity saw a retreat from the material world in the Western psyche. But the Protestant Reformation unknowingly reversed the situation, giving rise to materialism. That it would ultimately deteriorate to senseless consumerism as we are now witnessing in the 21st century was inevitable. Binding an individual to their labor, and specifically to the amount that they labor, simply gave rise to a cult of work ethic that had no conception of morality other than earthly possessions. The rise of this cult was one of the greatest triumphs of propaganda in human history and it came at a terrible cost.

"...work has assumed an all-pervading role in modern life. Never have men worked so much as in our society. Contrary to what is often said, man works much more nowadays than, for example, in the eighteenth century. Only the working hours have decreased. But the omnipresence of the duties of his work, the obligations and constraints, the actual working conditions, the intensity of work that never ends, make it weigh much more heavily on men today than on men in the past. Every modern man works more than the slave of long ago; standards have been adjusted downward. But whereas the slave worked only because he was forced to, modern man, who believes in his freedom and dignity, needs reasons and justifications to make himself work. Even the children in a modern nation do an amount of wok at school which no child was ever asked to do before the beginning of the nineteenth century; there, too, justifications are needed. One cannot make people live forever in a state of assiduous, intense, never-ending labor without giving them good reasons and creating by example a virtue of Work..."
(Propaganda, Jacques Ellul, pgs. 140-141)

This is exactly what has happened in America since the Colonial era.

"From the time of the Puritan settlers... children's books, school primers, newspaper editorials, poems, pamphlets, sermons, and political speeches told Americans that to work was to be godly and to be idle was to be wretched. Cotton Mathers instructed parents to keep their children in 'continual Employment' so as to 'deliver them from the Temptations of Idleness,' and Thomas Shapard spoke for all Puritans when he told his son to 'abhor... one hour of idleness as you would be ashamed of one hour of drunkenness.' In the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin adapted the Puritan work ethic to the age of capitalism with his enormously popular aphorisms that counseled Americans to work all hours of the day in order to achieve dignity and respect. 'It is the working man who is the happy man,' he wrote in Poor Richard's Almanack. 'It is the idle man who is the miserable man.' With the beginning of mass industrial production in the nineteenth century, pride in work and shame in leisure became the defining characteristics of good citizens of the young nation."
(A Renegade History of the United States, Thaddeus Russell, pg. 49)

While the Puritans share a great deal of the blame for the cult of workaholism that now dominates these United States, the agrarian movement offers no viable alternative. Over the years, diverse factions ranging from the hippie communes of the late 1960s to the 'Freeman on the land' movement and the Ron Paul worshippers of the 2012 election cycle have held a certain reverence for the early American freeholder living off the fat of the land, which he worked with his own two hands. The mountain man of the 19th century American West has also spurred their fair share of romanticism. Both the freeholder and the mountain man were seen as the quintessential embodiment of American freedom -the individual that was totally self-sufficient, that provided for all of his needs by the sweat of his brow.

The only problem with this image is that such individuals were even more tied to their labors than a Northern factory work or a Southern slave. As to the mountain man, the great survival expert Cody Lundin notes:

"The average 1800s American mountain man died when he was between thirty-four to thirty-seven years old. Mountain men were not living off the land without survival tools. They possessed several horses and mules, bags of flour and other dried staples, rifles, knives, traps, fire-starting methods, intimate knowledge of the landscape they were working within, potential friendships with native peoples, guts, determination, and a serious sense of adventure. Do you have any guesses as to why they died so young..?

"...In the case of the mountain men, doing everything alone flat wore them out, leaving them more susceptible to the dangers of their daily life. In other words, they died young from the sheer harshness of their solitary lifestyles."
(When All Hell Breaks Loose, pgs. 78-79)

Most mountain men didn't live long enough to show grey in their beards

Things were not better for the average American small farmer on the frontier.

"The English writer Frances Trollope, who lived for several years on the Ohio frontier in the 1820s and 1830s, wrote with astonishment about the life of women... In addition to cooking and cleaning and minding the children, they spun and wove all the clothes for the family, manufactured all the soap and candles, and made butter to use and to sell for sundries in town. 'The life she leads,' Trollope wrote, 'is one of hardship, privation, and labour.' Whether a farm produced only enough for subsistence, produced a surplus for sale, or both, those who lived on it typically spent nearly every waking hour at work. Unlike slaves, these 'freeholders' were entirely responsible for their livelihood, and so, even when all the work was done, their thoughts remained occupied by it. Diaries of farmers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are filled with detailed records of labor done and labor in need of doing, as well as motivational sayings on the virtues of diligence, frugality, and discipline."
(A Renegade History of the United States, Thaddeus Russell, pg. 48)

The myth that the simple life lies in returning to the earth, is just that: a myth. In many cases every day was a struggle for survival for both the mountain man and the freeholder. If nothing else, day to day life entailed ceaseless, back-breaking labour. Gone were the folk dances, singing festivals, communal feasts and games, and the scores of holidays that had been staples of English life for centuries before our ancestors crossed the Atlantic. All that remained was work. And to make matters even worse, work was increasingly being transformed into a kind of slavery. One of the chief instruments of this transformation was the implementation of wage-labor.

"...Recent historical scholarship is curiously silent about the widespread opposition to wage labor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, perhaps because it was influenced more directly by Lockean liberalism... than by the ideology of civic humanism. Yet the general uneasiness about the new economic order found its most striking expression in the nearly universal condemnation of wage labor.

"Langton Byllesby, a Philadelphia printer, argued in 1826 that wage labor, which destroyed the 'option whether to labour or not,' was the 'very essence of slavery.' The division of labor impoverished artisans, Byllesby said, 'for every improvement in the arts tending to reduce the value of labour necessary to produce them, must inevitably have the effect of increasing the value and power of wealth in the hands of those who may be fortuitously possessed of it.' In 1834, the General Traders' Union of New York declared, 'In proportion as the line of distinction between the employer and the employed is widened, the condition of the latter inevitably verges toward a system of vassalage.' Such statements recall Locke's argument that anyone forced by necessity to sell his labor lacked one of the essential attributes of freedom. As Mike Walsh put it, 'No man devoid of all other means of support but that which his labor affords him can be a freeman, under the present state of society. He must be a humble slave of capital...'

"Those who opposed the more and more militant demands made by artisans in the 1830s and 1840s did not quarrel with the claim that wage labor was a form of slavery. They merely denied that a permanent wage-earning class was taking shape in the United States... Americans took it as axiomatic, a cherished article of political faith, that freedom had to rest on the broad distribution of property ownership. In debates about universal suffrage, opponents of a restricted suffrage conceded the dangers of universal suffrage in societies marked by extremes of wealth and poverty...

"Both sides in early-nineteenth debates about suffrage and the labor question, in short, linked political freedom to the supremacy of the 'middling interests' or 'substantial yeomanry,' as the Jacksonian Robert Rantoul called them. Both sides took the position that freedom could not flourish in a nation of hirelings..."
(The True and Only Heaven, Christopher Lasch, pgs. 203-205)

Thus, even within the narrow confines of freedom that the Founding Fathers established, Americans have been totally enslaved. The very notion that wage labor is a kind of slavery is a totally foreign concept to the vast majority of Americans in the 21st century. Yet few among the Revolutionary generation, be they plebs or patriarchs, would have disputed the despotism a society such as ours would fall into with such a discrepancy between the wealthy and the poor. Universal ownership was always considered essential to republicanism even if it required an enormous amount of work to achieve. In the 21st century, the work load remains, but increasingly fewer and fewer Americans can expect to have a seat at the ownership table.

Neither far right or far left ideologies have offered any real alternatives either. Both fascism and communism feature the same reverence for work as capitalism. All three ideologies whole-heartily embrace the myth of 'liberation through work.' In many communist nations, the self described champions of the working class, workers could not even legally strike.

Regular readers may be wondering why I've chosen to write a article largely centered around the American obsession with work. This is a blog largely concerned with the occult, after all. But American workaholism is as much a product of occult societies as it is Christianity. Many of the Founding Fathers who sought to impose a system of ceaseless labor upon us were Freemasons. We've already examined how their notions of republican virtues were primarily pagan. While the 'Puritan work ethic' is often condemned (and not unjustly) for the plague of workaholism that has long infected this nation, it is often forgotten that Freemasonry was every bit as obsessed with work as any Puritan minister.

General Albert Pike, a 33rd degree Freemason in the Scottish Rite, dedicated an entire degree to work in his highly influential Masonic grimoire Morals and Dogmas. The degree, the twenty-second of thirty-three, was known as the Knight of the Royal Axe or Prince of Libanus. Libanus is an ancient name of Mount Lebanon. In the Bible Hiram of Tyre, who helped Solomon build his legendary temple, used cedar wood from Mount Lebanon in this work. A royal axe is likely the same as the double axe, the symbolism of which I've written on extensively here. As to the Masonic degree, Pike writes:

"Sympathy with the great laboring classes, respect for labor itself, and resolution to do some good work in our day and generation, these are the lessons of this Degree, and they are purely Masonic. Masonry has made a working-man and his associates the Heroes of her principal legend, and himself the companion of Kings. The idea is as simple and true as it is sublime. From first to last, Masonry is work. It venerates the Great Architect of the Universe. It commemorates the building of a Temple. Its principal emblems are the working tools of Masonry and Artisans. It preserves the name of the first worker in brass and iron as one of its pass-words. When the Brethren meet together, they are at labor. The Master is the overseer who sets the craft to work and gives them proper instruction. Masonry is the apotheosis of WORK...

"The life of all Gods figures itself to us as a Sublime Earnestness, -of Infinite battle against Infinite labor. Our highest religion is named the Worship of Sorrow. For the Son of Man there is no noble crown, well-worn, or even ill-worn, but is a crown of thorns. Man's highest destiny is not to be happy, to love pleasant things and find them. His only true unhappiness should be that he cannot work, and get his destiny as a man fulfilled. The day passes swiftly over, our life passes swiftly over, and the night cometh, wherein no man can work. That night once come, our happiness and unhappiness are vanished. It remains, or the want of it remains, for endless Times and Eternities...
(Morals and Dogmas, pg. 288)

Albert Pike

One of the major Masonic symbols is the beehive. It is symbolic of the social order Freemasonry strives for and the work ethic that it requires. The thirty-third degree Freemason Manly P. Hall states, "The beehive is found in Masonry as a reminder that in diligence and labor for a common good true happiness and prosperity are found" (The Secret Teachings of All Ages, pg. 271). Work is one of the chief aspects of life that this philosophy has been most rigorously imposed upon.

"Hives are the bees' houses and, by metonymy, the bees themselves, collectively, as a tribe. Their symbolic quality is therefore clear. In so far as it is a house, the hive is maternal reassurance and protection: in so far as it is a hard-working collective -and how hard-working: its hum is like that of a workshop or factory -the hive symbolizes the type of organized and directed confederation, subject to strict regulation, which is regarded as soothing and pacifying the individual's basic anxieties. Thus, in some initiation societies and religious communities, patterns of organization call to mind symbolically those through which some heads of state or business chiefs nowadays ensure their personal power in the name of order, justice and security."
(Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pgs. 508-509)

As noted above, Pike views the proper structure of work the same as the structure of a Masonic lodge with a master who "sets the craft to work," a fancy way of saying he manages his underlinings. This is similar to the institution of wage-slavery that was imposed upon Americans in the nineteenth century. In early America each man strove to be his own master and had a decent shot of succeeding. It was only later on that the common American accepted his status as the perpetual apprentice. And yet he still labors as hard as ever in true Masonic fashion, for leisure is only fit for swine.

"Labor is the truest emblem of God, the Architect and Eternal Maker; noble Labor, which is yet to be the King of this Earth, and sit on the highest Throne. Men without duties to do, are like trees planted on precipices; from the roots of which all the earth has crumbled. Nature owns no man who is not also a Martyr. She scorns the man who sits screened from all work, from want, danger, hardship, the victory over which is work; and has all his work and battling done by other men; and yet there are men who pride themselves that they and theirs have done no work time out of mind. So neither have the swine."
(Morals and Dogmas, pg. 289)

And yet we saw early Americans were quite found of their leisure (of which drunkenness and casual sex was a major component of). It was only during the Revolution that the (Masonic) Founding Father began actively fostering 'republican virtues' that would lead to sober, joyless, productive worker bees that were necessary to maintain such an institution. So dear readers, do we currently toil under the Puritan work ethic? Or is it the Masonic work ethic? If it is the former, then why do so many professionals wear variations on Masonic dress when they head into the office?

Religion, the Scarlet Woman, and Dope Part III

As noted in part one of this series, a chief concern of planter type civilizations was suppressing individualism. The altered states of consciousness magic mushrooms and other entheogens produce can influence different people in many different and unpredictable ways. Nomadic peoples accustomed to the freedoms and uncertainties of the open plains would be well suited to the types of experiences magic mushrooms produce. But the urban dwellers in highly regulated city-states, not so much. These city-states were almost entirely the result of an initiated priesthoods.

"...its tiny cities were suddenly bursting into bloom -the whole cultural syndrome that has since constituted the germinal unit of all of the high civilizations of the world. And we cannot attribute this event to any achievement of the mentality of simple peasants. Nor was it the mechanical consequences of a simple piling up of material artifacts, economically determined. It was actually and clearly the highly conscious creation (this much can be asserted with complete assurance) of the mind and science of a new order of humanity, which had never before appeared in the history of mankind; the professional, full-time, initiated, strictly regimented temple priest."
(The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell, pg. 146)

In order for the priest class to accomplish these feats, it needed strict obedience from the populace. The kind of personal and immediate spiritual experiences that magic mushrooms can induce in individuals could potentially create rivals to the priestly authorities across the boards if they were widely used. The very structure of the entire civilization would in fact be threatened. Thus, it seems most plausible that the use of such drugs would be restricted amongst the priest class themselves.

However, there is vast evidence of another narcotic that was heavily used by the whole of these planter societies: opiates.

"The seed of the poppy is a delicious and nonpsychoactive food, as enthusiasts of poppy seed rolls can attest. Yet when the seed capsule is scratched with blade or fingernail,, a milky latexlike material soon accumulates and, as it hardens, turns a dark brown. This material is raw opium. Like the psilocybin mushroom with its association with cattle, and the parasitism of ergot on rye and other cereals, the opium poppy is a major psychoactive plant that has evolved in the presence of human food source. In the case of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, the psychoactivity and the nutritional value are sectioned off into different parts of the same plant.

"Opium in various forms has been in the physicians' armamentarium since at least 1600 B.C. An Egyptian medical treatise of that period prescribed opium for crying children just as Victorian nannies dosed infants with opiate-laced Godfrey's Cordial to keep them quiet.

"For most of its history opium was not smoked but rather the black sticky resin was dissolved into wine and drunk, or else rolled into a pellet and swallowed. Opium, as a cure for pain, as euphorint and rumored aphrodisiac, was known in Eurasia for several thousand of years."
(Food of the Gods, Terence McKenna, pgs. 190-191)

Opium cultivation dates all the way back to Sumeria circa 3400 B.C., as this PBS article notes:

"The opium poppy is cultivated in lower Mesopotamia. The Sumerians refer to it as Hul Gil, the 'joy plant.' The Sumerians would soon pass along the plant and its euphoric effects to the Assyrians. The art of poppy-culling would continue from the Assyrians to the Babylonians who in turn would pass their knowledge onto the Egyptians."

Opium was a major sacrament in ancient Crete and other cities that were part of the Minoan civilization.

"During the waning of the millennia-long Minoan civilization and its religion of Archaic worship of a Great Mother, the original source of the connection to the Goddess of vegetable nature came eventually to be replaced by the intoxication of opium. Early Minoan texts testify the the fact that poppies were widely cultivated on both Crete and Pylos during the Late Minoan; in these texts, the poppy head is used as an ideogram in financial tallies. The yield of poppies indicated is so huge that for some time it was assumed that these numbers must refer to grain rather than opium. The confusion of grain and poppy is easy to understand as Demeter on the mainland remains to be elucidated, especially as there is some iconographic confusion between the poppy flower and the pomegranate, also a plant associated with the Mysteries. Kerenyi quotes Theokritos VII. 157:

"For the Greeks Demeter was still a poppy goddess,

Bearing sheaves and poppies in both hands.

"A remarkable illustration in Erich Neumann's The Great Mother shows the Goddess in association with a beehive and holding poppy seed capsules and heads of grain in her left hand while resting her right hand on one of the unadorned pillars central to the Minoan earth religion. Rarely have so many elements of the Archaic technology of ecstasy been brought together so explicitly. The figure is almost an allegory of the transformation of Minoan shamanic spirituality in its late phase. Its mushroom roots are symbolized in the aniconic column; they are the touchstones of the Goddess who looks toward the promise of poppies and ergotized grain. The hive of bees introduced the theme of honey, the archetypal image of ecstasy, female sexuality, and preservation that survives the shifting botanical identities of the sacraments"

(Food of the Gods, Terence McKenna, pgs. 191-192)

The symbolism of the poppy goddess image McKenna references with a beehive and poppy seed capsules is striking. The beehive is another ancient symbol.

"Hives are the bees' houses and, by metonymy, the bees themselves, collectively, as a tribe. Their symbolic quality is therefore clear. In so far as it is a house, the hive is maternal reassurance and protection: in so far as it is a hard-working collective -and how hard-working: its hum is like that of a workshop or factory -the hive symbolizes the type of organization and directed confederation, subject to strict regulation, which is regarded as soothing and pacifying the individual's basic anxieties. Thus, in some initiation societies and religious communities, patterns of organization call to mind symbolically those through which some heads of state or business chiefs nowadays ensure their personal power in the names of order, justice and security."
(Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pg.s. 508-509)

The beehive is certainly an apt symbol of the social order of planter-type civilizations. Are the poppy's capsules the chief tool of this social order? McKenna argued that widespread use of opiates didn't come to the Minoan civilization until it's waning years, but this is highly debatable. Other scholars have argued that opiates were one of the key features of matriarch civilization.

"First, what was the realm over which the Lady presided? Unlike Zeus's affiliation with the open daylight sky, the Lady's domain is the enclosed space, the settled city, the house, but also natural enclosures, like caves, or architectural imitations of subterranean chambers, and her time is night, dark places like the tomb or the womb, or architectural imitations of its symbolism, like the labyrinth. She or the Pillar sometimes appears on top of a mountain, or the mountain itself can be substituted for her in the configuration of flanking beasts, but her sacred space is a cave on the mountain, and not the bright Olympian domicile; or the sanctity of the mountain consists in its resemblance to features of the female anatomy, and not, as with the Olympians, in its celestial separation from earth. She sometimes has her eyes closed, as if dreaming or asleep. Narcosis is the experience in her shamanism, unlike the enlightenment of Zeus, and her special plant is not wild, like Amanita, but a cultivar, in particular, the opium poppy, for which it, too, like Amanita, later has purely symbolic surrogates substituted, for example, the rose (for its similar flower and capsule-like hips) and the pomegranate (whose fruit resembles the poppy capsule).
(The World of Classical Myth, Carl A.P. Ruck & Danny Staples, pg. 32)

There is also some indication that opiates were used in the rites of human sacrifice (discussed in part two) found in the planter societies.

"...the Lotos, the stinging nettle tree, Celtis australis; to eat of its sweet opiate fruit induced such a stupor that one lost all desire to return home again. It is just such visions of paradise that the drugged victims of Apollo (and Artemis) are induced to see so that they hasten willingly to their immolation, singing joyously their last, most beautiful song, like the prophetic swan, that is the god's bird, standing on the threshold of death and seeing the world to come. Such victims were called the pharmakos, drugged upon the pharmakon or 'medicine.' As with the Druids, criminals were used as offerings, treated as if they were the god; but when the available supply of subjects was insufficient, others might have to be called upon to fill the lack."
(The Apples of Apollo, Carl A.P. Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples & Clark Heinrich, pg. 32)

The identities of Apollo and Artemis were quite different in their Minoan form than the commonly known Greek versions.

"The excavation of Knossos led to further discoveries on Crete and the islands of the Cyclades and elsewhere, from which a clear notion of the Mother Goddess in the Greek lands has emerged. Since she is the original deity from whom the women on Olympus evolved, through the assimilation of the Minoan religion by the Mycenaean Greeks, it is essential to grasp certain aspects of her symbolism.

"She is the Lady of the Pillar, whom we have already met at the entrance to the citadel of Mycenae. She is the mainstay of the enclosed space, for which the Labyrinth is one manifestation. When flanked by beasts, as in the Lion Gate, she has been dubbed the Potnia Theron or 'Mistress of Beasts.' The phrase is a quotation from the Homeric epic tradition, where it describes the Olympian goddess Artemis as a huntress. But she was a huntress only after her incorporation into that family as a daughter of Zeus, with her twin brother Apollo...

"The Lady of Beasts was never a huntress amongst the Minoans. She and the male deity who would later become her twin brother were originally Lady and Consort, Rulers of the Labyrinth, and their fearful and sinister identities as recipients of human victims there required the most strenuous evolution of myth to isolate the two of them from their Minoan pasts and to remodel them both into their Classical identities as the most perfect exemplars of Greek female and male pubescent youthfulness. Artemis, despite her sexual maturity, was even made into a perpetual virgin, denied forever her former role as Mother."
(The World of Classical Myth, Carl A.P. Ruck & Danny Staples, pgs. 30-32)

Certainly the connection to death and poppies is still present in the modern era. This is most notable in the remembrance poppy used during Remembrance Day (sometimes known as Poppy Day), a memorial day celebrated in Commonwealth countries for veterans killed since the first World War. The poppy was apparently selected for this honor because these plants grew upon the disturbed earth of battlefields and freshly dug cemeteries in Flanders during the first World War. This imagery was commemorated in the poem "In Flanders Field." This was not the first time poppies were noted to grow upon the sites of recent battlefields. Legends assert that white poppies grew upon the bloody battlefields Genghis Khan left in his wake during the advance of the Mongol Empire. Even Frazer notes this phenomenon.

"In the summer after the battle of Landen, the most sanguinary battle of the seventeenth century in Europe, the earth, saturated with the blood of twenty thousand slain, broke forth into millions of poppies, and the traveller who passed that vast sheet of scarlet might well fancy that the earth had indeed given up her dead."
(The Golden Bough, James Frazer, pg. 336)

So much for death and the poppy. It seems likely to me that opium was the chief narcotic used in many of the ancient planter societies with magic mushrooms being reserved for an initiated priesthood. Opium would help numb the pain of the vast physical labor such a civilization would require in addition to numbing the ambitions of the populace, rather than bringing about enlightenment as entheogens would. Within a matriarchal society in which women were the dominate faction, opiates would be especially appealing to numb the pain of the menstrual cycle and child birth.

The legendary magician Aleister Crowley, a self-professed follower of the 'Sumerian tradition,' made use of drugs in various magical rituals. I mention Crowley now as much of his magical system was an attempt to recreate the Mystery schools of the ancients which were widespread amongst planter-type civilizations.

"In certain magical operations which Crowley performed (e.g. the Abuldiz Working in 1911, the Paris Working in 1914, and the Amalantrah Working, 1918) a variety of drugs was employed.

"Cocaine, which he assigns to the element of Fire, was used for fortifying the will, thus helping to keep the object of the operation firmly in mind. Morphine, slowing and purifying the mind, makes thought and its formulation more vivid and precise. Heroin, it seems, partakes of both these qualities and combines them in a peculiarly subtle manner.

"To the element of Water he attributes hashish and mescal, owing to their image-making properties, and also because they open the gates of Pleasure and Beauty. Morphine he also attributed to this element.

"To Air, which is the element assigned to the reasoning faculties, he attributes ethyl oxide (ether) for its use in mental analysis and the more profound movements of introspection.

"Finally, the element Earth embraces all the directly hypnotic drugs which induce repose and forgetfulness, enabling the Magician to withdraw into the arms of the Great Mother to restore his devitalized vehicles, astral and physical.

"With the attribution of specific drugs to the elements, the old ceremonial and symbolic techniques of subconscious control are superseded by living and experiential aids. Similarly, with sex, alcohol, the mystic dances and circumambulation, the use of mantra and lyrical incantation. These aids, used in conjunction with drugs, stimulate the whorls of energy in the subtle body. In connection with sex and drugs, Crowley wrote in 1917: 'I note, with all stimulant drugs, that if one is with others, the force is entirely dissipated, usually on the sexual plane. If one is alone, one becomes creative at once. This is important, as establishing the Kundalini doctrine, with its upper and lower exits. It does not bear, however, on the doctrine of abstinence from sex; for in normal excitement the sex seems to stimulate the other creative power.

"That is to say, sex seems to stimulate the Kundalini or Serpent Power. Crowley thus observed the direct effects of sex and drugs on the vital centre or magical power in the human organism."
(The Magical Revival, Kenneth Grant, pgs. 97-98)

Crowley

I have found virtually no references to entheogens in Crowley's writings on drugs. This may simply have been out of ignorance -the psychedelic properties of magic mushrooms and the likes were all but unknown in Western culture before the 1950s (at least amongst mainstream sources). Possibly the 'directly hypnotic drugs' associated with the element of earth are in reference to entheogens (and are interestingly linked to the Earth mother), but its difficult to say. Kenneth Grant wrote The Magical Revival in the 1970s when the use of entheogens had become widespread, yet he virtually ignores them as well. Of course, the 'directly hypnotic drugs' may also be a reference to opium, which was curiously left out of Grant's elemental classification system.

Further, even though heroin is mentioned in the passage discussing drugs falling under the element of fire, it could actually have been associated with earth as its effect are described as a combination of cocaine and morphine (which was classified under the water element). On the other hand, Crowley claims that heroin aids the powers of concentration, whereas the 'directly hypnotic drugs' are said to induce forgetfulness. Crowley does not seem to believe the same was true of opium, however. If opiates are in fact the bulk of the drugs that fall under earth, it makes the line 'withdraw into the arms of the Great Mother to restore his devitalized vehicles, astral and physical' most curious in regards to what we've already learned about the mother cult that has appeared the world over since the days of ancient Sumer. The noted metaphysical scholar Robert Anton Wilson, himself a big fan of Crowley, seems to have shared a similar view of opiates.

"To activate the first brain take an opiate. Mother Opium and Sister Morphine bring you down to cellular intelligence, bio-survival passivity, the floating consciousness of the newborn. (This is why Freudians identify opiate addiction with the desire to return to infancy."
(The Cosmic Trigger Vol. 1, Robert Anton Wilson, pg. 200)

There are no shortages of references to opiates in the writings of Crowley and his followers. Opiates (especially heroin) and ether seem to have been the main drugs used in Crowley's magical system. The power of heroin was in fact almost to much for the Great Beast to handle.

"Morphine tends to aid concentration and relieve the pressure of anxiety. Like opium, it aids the creative imagination. Objections to the use of these two drugs consist in the fact that they impair executive ability, so that the ideas which they inspire remain sterile and are rarely carried over into practical life. As is well known, opium has the virtue of relieving pain and conferring philosophic tranquility...

"Heroin combines the virtues of opium and cocaine. It excites the imagination, aids concentration, and induces calm. Unlike opium and morphine, however, it increases power and endurance.

"The life-death struggle which Crowley waged against heroin is related in Liber 93. Towards the end of his life, he notes:

" 'There is no yen at all (from the drug) when I am free from (a) care, (b) boredom. To reach physiological minimum I must have (1) daily masseur-valet to get me up and out, (2) supply of books and forced stage or screen visits, (3) secretary at will, (4) company, (5) food and drink.'

"In the same diary he notes that 1914 was the probable date of his first heroin experiment, taking some three grains per day. After the tremendous struggle with the drug -to which reference has already been made -he shook off completely its hold over him and there is no further record of its use until, in 1940, seven years before his death, his doctor began prescribing 1/4 or 1/6 grain for recurrent attacks of asthma. The complaint had again become acute, and this is the first record of heroin consumption in his dairies for many years. From that time on, until his death in 1947, he took steadily increasing doses until in 1946 we read of doses as large as 6 grains per day.

"His excessive use of the drug between 1920 and 1922 he ascribed to financial anxiety, lack of stimulus (correspondence with chelas, etc.), and his inability to get things published.
"The conclusions he reached in respect of the drug in Liber 93 led him to declare that his experience should serve as a preliminary prima facie case for a revolutionary revision of the extant medical theories on the subject, and of the legislation regarding the sale of heroin and similar drugs."
(ibid, pgs. 95-96)

chunky heroin

So much for Crowley. I would now likely to briefly return to my theory that the priesthoods and esoteric orders of various matriarchal societies used entheogens in secret rites while promoting the use of opiates to the general populace. We may be able to gleam elements of these practices by examining of the European alchemists of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. At the heart of alchemical philosophy was a secret raw material that was considered essential to an alchemical work.

"Simply stated, the alchemical work begins with a secret raw material called the prima materia, or prime matter, a single substance absolutely essential to the work but never identified except by the most unusual terms. It is called the radical moisture, the round body from the center, the hermaphroditic monster, Adam's tree of paradise with many flowers, the water, the sperm of the world, the empress of all honor, the dragon, and many other names. Once in hand the prima materia must be transformed through the alchemical operations into the philosopher's stone, although some authors maintain that the prima materia is the stone. In any case, the next step is to extract from the secret stone, through the torment of fire, the miraculous water: the aqua permanens or aqua divina, also known as the strangest of liquids, drinkable gold."
(Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy, Clark Heinrich, pg. 169)

Naturally some have speculated that this prima materia is a magic mushroom or some other kind of entheogen. For instance Clark Heinrich argues a text known as the Emerald Tablet, which was highly popular with alchemists in the Middle Ages, is a metaphor for the fly agaric mushroom.

"...the secret substance's father is the sunlike mature mushroom, whose 'seed' falls from his body to bring about the birth of his offspring. Its mother is the white, rough-textured 'moon' of the mushroom embryo, which seems to give birth to the solar cap. The wind carries the mushroom spores as well as the rainstorms that cause the mushroom's birth. The earth 'nurses' the mushroom from egg to cup as the mushroom draws water from it. 'When it turns toward the earth' corresponds to the end of sporulation, when the upturned cap begins to dry out and turn back toward the ground; this is the optimal harvest time, because fully mature mushrooms have the highest concentration of muscimol, the main active ingredient. Drying converts ibotenic acid to muscimol as well; once completely dry 'its power is complete.' The last statement of the quotation recapitulates the whole process, adding that the substance receives the power of higher and lower things. The 'higher and lower things' refer to the powers of heaven and earth, but also warn the initiate to be aware that the same mushroom can lead to both heaven and hell. The final promise is that the glory (bliss) of all creation awaits the person who likewise receives the powers of the secret substance."
(ibid, pg. 170)

Mercurius, the personification of the prima materia, showing characteristics of the fly agaric mushroom

While the use of magic mushrooms amongst alchemists is highly speculative (as is most of anything else associated with alchemy), their connection to opiates is quite firm. This is most overt in the figure of the legendary Paracelsus, the man that essentially reintroduced Western civilization to opiates.

"...the use of opium nearly ceased for many centuries in Europe; the early herbals of Saxon England mention juice expelled from poppies as a cure for headache and sleeplessness, but clearly opium played a very minor role in the armamentarium of medieval Europe. Martin Ruland's Alchemical Lexicon, published in 1612, mentions only the 'osoror' as a synonym for opium, and then without explanation.

"It is to Paracelus, the famed 'father of chemo-therapy,' that we can trace the revival of interest in opium. The great sixteenth-century Swiss alchemist, medical reformer, and quack advocated and used opium on a lavish scale. Here again, as in the case of distilled alcohol, it is an alchemist, one involved in the pursuit of the spirit assumed to be locked into matter, who discovered the means to release the power locked within a simple plant. And, like Lully before him, Paracelsus assumed that he had discovered the universal panacea: 'I possess a secret remedy which I call laudanum and which is superior to all other heroic remedies.'

"Shortly after Paracelsus began promulgating the virtues of opium, physicians of his school of thought were preparing nostrums whose sole basis of activity was the copious amount of opium that they contained. One of these enthusiastic followers, the alchemist van Helmont, became well known as 'Doctor Opiatus,' the first 'croaker' or junk doctor."
(Food of the Gods, Terence McKenna, pgs. 194-195)

Paracelsus (top) and 'Doctor Opiatus' himself, Jan Baptist van Helmont (bottom) 

Within our own modern society, we may also gleam this tangled web of entheogens and opiates. In fact, the the second half of the 20th century demonstrated the kind of 'destablizing' effects widespread entheogen use can have in a highly organized (e.g. matriarchal derived-society) civilization. In the 1950s the Cryptocracy began experimenting with various psychedelics as tools of mind control, which eventually reached the general populace in the mid-1960s. Large scale social unrest soon followed, and may even have threatened to break out of the Cryptocracy's control. This was chronicled in a prior post that can be found here. By the mid-1970s and onward psychedelics were progressively more and more marginalized despite several short lived revivals. In the 21st century prescription meds, many of the most popular opiate based, seem to be the new drug choice amongst the Cryptocracy for social control. More on the growing prescription drug epidemic can be found here. So far this method is certainly proving to be more predictable than the psychedelic experiments of the 50s, 60s, and 1970s. But then the priesthoods and the magicians of old already knew this.

And so we reach the end the end of this journey in search of the origins of religion, the Scarlet Woman and the role dope has played in both. From the fields of Sumer nearly 7,000 years ago to the pill factories of today, it is quite a long, strange trip indeed.

The Silence of the Magicians Part I

Silence of the Lambs stands as one of the most important films of its era, in addition to a genre defining work. In much the same way all 'gangster' movies are judged by the standards set by The Godfather films, so goes the serial killer subgenre and Silence. It also happens to be a film absolutely loaded with esoteric significance. By all accounts, the Thomas Harris novels on which the popular 'Hannibal' series are based are a gold mine of 'Revelation of Method' type information. Unfortunately, Recluse has only read one Harris novel, Hannibal, and that was all the way back in the Dark Ages that were high school. Needless to say, the significance went well over my head at the time, and thus I will not be able to draw from the Harris books for further support of this piece. Pity, but I believe the film has more than enough symbolism and hints to work with.

Within conspiracy circles one of the most controversial claims revolves around the ever growing phenomenon of serial killers. As violent crimes in American society progressively declined (until recent years), the rise of serial murders since the 1980s is a major deviance from the trend. This has led several researchers over the years to suggest that the rise in serial murders in the modern era is a form of covert terrorism being carried out by the Cryptocracy. Of course, conspiracies surrounding serial murders stretches all the way back to one of the originators, namely Jack the Ripper. Those of you that have either read Steven Knight's Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, and/or have seen the films Murder by Decree or From Hell are aware of the links between the Ripper killings and Freemasonry. Those of you unfamiliar with these materials can find a somewhat biased synopsis of these theories at Wikipedia here.

In the modern era researchers such Michael A Hoffman, Adam Gorightly, and David McGowan have suggested that several of the most notorious serial killers, in addition to assassins and spree shooters, were products of covert mind control programs to wage a war of domestic terrorism against the peoples of the United States for the sake of bringing about a police state.

The above statement is of course a lot to swallow, and Recluse is even feeling a little silly about writing it presently. But it is something that I plan on pursuing in depth in future blogs as there is far more merit to this theory than many of the more seemingly 'practical' conspiracy theories floating around the web. That the CIA and other like organizations have actively been looking for ways to 'program' assets is not, however, a conspiracy.

"For intelligence purposes, what was required of MK-ULTRA was the ability to manipulate memory, and to relax the inhibitions of captured enemy agents so that they would reveal their secrets. Thus, what the Freudians call the 'superego' had to be bypassed, allowing the controller direct access to the contents of an enemy agent's mind. That was step one. Step two would involve erasing specific pieces of information from the subject's memory and replacing those pieces with new bits of memory, thus permitting the Agency to send that agent back into the field without any knowledge that he or she had been interrogated and had given up sensitive information. Step three was a potential bonus: Could the enemy agent then be 'programmed' to commit acts on behalf of the Agency, without knowing who gave the commands or why? This was the essence of the Manchurian Candidate. It is also the essence of what we know today as hypnotherapy and 'depth' psychoanalysis, for the psychiatrist or psychotherapist in this case is looking for access to the patent's unconscious layers, to extract important information (such as childhood trauma) and to neutralize the effects of that trauma, in some cases replacing certain unwanted or negative behavior patterns with new, approved patterns. Persons going to hypnotherapists for help with a drinking problem, or smoking, or over-eating, go through a similar process, with the important difference that the entire treatment is voluntary. What the Agency was looking for was a key that would unlock these secrets and allow unfettered access to the human mind, with or without the voluntary cooperation or submission of the 'patient.'"
(Sinister Forces Book One, Peter Levenda, pgs. 218-219)

The major debate is not whether the US intelligence community has actively been looking for ways to 'program' assets, but to what lengths this programming can be taken. I have already laid some background on this topic in my blog on 'Cults, Gangs, Dope, and Intelligence' as well as my series on Charles Manson, which can be read here and here. For those of you that really want to play connect the dots, read my three part child trafficking series here, here, and here, and take in my two part documentary on the Brotherhood of Eternal Love here and here. For the purposes of this blog I will not be delving into the possibility of an actual 'MK-Serial Killer' program, but the possibility that the film Silence of the Lambs is a thinly veiled account of such a program. Now, to the main event.

Lambs centers around a would be FBI agent named Clarice Starling, who is played by Jodie Foster. Foster is of course an apt choice as she was the obsession of would be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr., who is himself widely suspected of being a 'Manchurian Candidate.' Hinckley in turn was obsessed with Foster on account of her role as a prostitute in Taxi Driver in which Robert De Niro stars as an unhinged Vietnam veteran who attempts to assassinate a rising politician before going on a shooting spree intended to save the prostitute played by Foster from her pimp. Taxi Driver, with its memes of political assassination, child prostitution, and general conspiracy is itself big on 'Revelation of Method.' 15 years after its release Foster would find herself starring in yet another mind control-soaked masterpiece.

In Lambs Foster finds herself entangled in the web of two separate serial killers, one dubbed 'Buffalo Bill', the other the legendary Dr. Hannibal Lecter character played by Sir Anthony Hopkins. At the onset of the film Lecter is incarcerated in a Baltimore mental facility while the so-called 'Buffalo Bill' murderer, one Jame Gumb, is in the midst of his rampage. The head of the Behavior Science Unit, a character named Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) who is based upon legendary profiler John E. Douglas, sends Starling to interview Lecter in Baltimore. Starling is under the impression that she is being sent simply to convince Dr. Lecter to fill out a questionnaire when in fact Crawford is hoping that Lecter may provide some insight into Buffalo Bill. Hannibal picks up on Crawford's play but opts to help Starling anyway.

Not so subtle hints that Buffalo Bill is in fact a Manchurian Candidate are dropped liberally throughout. At one point Hannibal himself blatantly tells Starling, "Our Billy wasn't born a criminal, Clarice. He was made one through years of systematic abuse." Bill is given a background common of many serial killers, namely one featuring years of sexual abuse. As with several high profile serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, David Berkowitz ('Son of Sam'), and Leonard Lake, Bill is also a veteran, having served in the U.S. Navy. And yes, I gleamed this detail from reading several synopsises of the book, and not from the movie, so I'm cheating ever so slightly. Anyway, whether Bill was groomed from early childhood for the role he eventually plays, or whether he was simply recruited while serving in the Navy due to his background, we can not know.

What we can know is that Bill links himself throughout the film with both the butterfly and the moth, two insects with heavy esoteric significance in the occult. This is especially true of the butterfly, which along with scarab, the scorpion and the bee, are the chief insect symbols.

"The butterfly (under the name of Psyche, a beautiful maiden of opalescent light) symbolizes the human soul because of the stages it passes through in order to unfold its power of flight. The three divisions through which the butterfly passes in its unfoldment resemble closely the three degrees of the Mystery School, which degrees are regarded as consummating the unfoldment of man by giving him emblematic wings by which he may soar to the skies. Unregenerate man, ignorant and helpless, is a symbolized by the stage  between ovum and larva; the disciple, seeking truth and dwelling in meditation, by the second stage, from larva to pupa, at which time the insect enters its chrysalis (the tomb of the Mysteries); the third stage, from pupa to imago (wherein the perfect butterfly comes forth), typifies the unfolded enlightened soul of the initiate rising from the tomb of his baser nature."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall, pg. 270)

Those of you familiar with the concept of the 'Monarch Project' will also recognize the significance of the butterfly, as the project derives its name from the Monarch butterfly. The Monarch Project is another controversial aspect of conspiracy culture as their is limited evidence to its actual existence, though its objectives (to create a 'programmed' intelligence asset) are very similar to official CIA programs such as MK-ULTRA. Here I will only briefly define Monarch, and delve into its legitimacy. To that end, former Republican Nebraska state senator and CIA asset John DeCamp notes:

"'Monarch' refers to young people in America who were victims of mind control experiments run either by US. government agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency, or military intelligence agencies.

"The story by Monarch victims...is that they were tortured for the purpose of creating 'multiple personalities' within them. These multiple personalities could then be programmed as desired -as spies, 'drug mules,' prostitutes, or assassins."
(The Franklin Cover-Up, pg. 323) 

As to the butterfly itself, Vigilant Citizen's Secret Arcana blog notes:

"Monarch mind control is named after the Monarch butterfly – an insect who begins its life as a worm (representing undeveloped potential) and, after a period of cocooning (programming) is reborn as a beautiful butterflies (the Monarch slave). Some characteristics specific to the Monarch butterfly are also applicable to mind control.

'One of the primary reasons that the Monarch mind-control programming was named Monarch programming was because of the Monarch butterfly. The Monarch butterfly learns where it was born (its roots) and it passes this knowledge via genetics on to its offspring (from generation to generation). This was one of the key animals that tipped scientists off, that knowledge can be passed genetically. The Monarch program is based upon Illuminati and Nazi goals to create a Master race in part through genetics. If knowledge can be passed genetically (which it is), then it is important that parents be found that can pass the correct knowledge onto those victims selected for the Monarch mind control.'"

Curiously, after Starling has killed Buffalo Bill the camera cuts to the image of a butterfly on a wind ornament (after a cut to a newspaper clipping proclaiming 'Terror') in the killer's lair. Further, when Starling informs Lecter that an insect has been found in the throat of one of Bill's victims he immediately asks if its a butterfly.

The moth, especially the death's head moth depicted in the film, is another insect with esoteric significance.

"Night moths typify the secret wisdom, because they are hard to discover and are concealed by the darkness (ignorance). Some are emblems of death, as Acherontia atropos, the death's-head moth, which has a marking on its body somewhat like a human skull."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall, pg. 270)

In some traditions the death's head moth first appeared in England during the beheading of Charles I, though I have yet to find reliable collaboration of this. Another significant aspect of the death's head moth are their relationship to bees. The death's moth is also notorious for raiding beehives which it manages by mimicking the scent of the honey bees. The beehive is of course a major symbol in Freemasonry and other occult orders. In essence the beehive describes the natural order of the world from the view of the Cryptocracy. The death's head moth upsets that order, making it a kind of terrorist to the worker bees. Buffalo Bill operates in much the same fashion, mimicking the actions of normal people to blend in, yet terrorizing the order of the world by his seemingly random attacks.

And that brings us to the supposed 'randomness' of Bill's victims. As the FBI fumbles blindly trying to make Bill fit into one of their legendary profiles, Hannibal immediately guesses both Bill's identity, and his selection of victims. He tips off Starling to the location of Bill's lair with a note scribbled on a case file that states: "Clarice, doesn't this random scattering of sites seem desperately random - like the elaborations of a bad liar?" From this, Starling is able to deduce that Bill's first victim was not chosen at random, but was someone that he already knew, in contrast to the profile Crawford and the rest of the BSU boys were working from.

And if Bill's first victim was not random, is it possible that he had some familiarity with his other victims? If so, this opens up a major can of worms concerning Bill's final victim, one Catherine Martin, daughter of the fictional Republican senator Ruth Martin. In the film a TV anchor is heard in the background assuring the audience that the abduction is not politically motivated, but the circumstances are most peculiar. It seems a bit of a stretch that Bill, who is based out of Ohio, would just happen to randomly abduct the daughter of a US senator in Memphis, TN. The actual abduction itself, as presented in the film, seems to indicate that Bill at least had some familiarity with her routine before carrying out his assault. It seems possible that his familiarity with the Martins went beyond simple stalking.

In the second part of this series we shall examine the choice of locations, the FBI and psychiatric fields, and even Lecter himself. Stay tuned.